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earsay music

artists

Structural Damage

Andrew Czink, keyboardsJohn Oliver, guitar & electronics

MANDATE and ARTISTIC OBJECTIVESThe mandate of our duo is to perform music we create together and in collaboration with guest artists – other composer/performers or creators from other artistic disciplines – to bring to audiences a unique creative musical and visual experience that reflects the musical and artistic advances of our time, while maintaining the historical link to the traditional musical instruments of the past. As a duo we perform on our main instruments, piano and guitar, whose sounds we extend by unusual performance techniques and electronic extensions and manipulations. The inherent theatricality of the musician’s performance gestures are further enhanced by the addition of new performance devices that sense the performer’s motion, proximity, and other spacial and sensory information. Our goal is to create a gutsy and visceral experience.

HISTORYSTRUCTURAL DAMAGE first performed together in Vancouver on January 23, 1999 at Rainer Bürck’s Without Fear CD-release concert [earsay CD 99001] in Vancouver. Composer/performers Czink and Oliver formulated the idea for the group STRUCTURAL DAMAGE during their rehearsals in preparation for this concert. The trio developed a new work by email and mail during the months before the concert, and performed after a week of rehearsal. The resulting 25-minute piece, called Structural Damage, inspired the name for the group.

On March 30, 2000 they performed & recorded a special event at Vancouver’s Western Front with special guest composer/performers Giorgio Magnanensi, (DJ/electronics), and Douglas Schmidt (accordion). The resulting CD, STRUCTURAL DAMAGE: Live at the Lux (es-00001) was released that year on the earsay label. In January 2001 the duo performed at the Standford University Ballroom (Palo Alto) and the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies, (Berkeley) in California. In 2002, the duo toured Canada from coast to coast performing 18 events in 10 days, with guest performers Ron Samworth, and Japanese musicians Kasuhisa Uchihashi and Yasuhiro Otani. See images from the tour here.